ACC Chapter 41 Appearing

The sound of wind, blowing past my ears was muffled, a result of a tweak across the spiritual energy ward tracing my silhouette.

Honestly, this was scary as hell! The planet's gravity had more than doubled, making it so that the velocity my body was plunging with towards the ground was terrifying!

Livia's logic had dictated that I go help another settlement that had gone dark. But I had insisted on coming here. How could I have felt at ease when I didn't know how my secretary was faring?

With a thought, I morphed my defensive layer at the surface of my scalp into a cone, pointed downwards, which helped in cutting through the dangerous air.

I had dropped from a height below the sparse cloud cover. Risking an encounter with a cloud monster would only be detrimental to me. Even now, I was keeping myself alert, in case the air decided to become some sort of spirit.

Even with the sparse connection with the rest of the globe, sightings of monsters birthed by the planet itself had been prevalent among each and every person that managed to make it to Defiant.

Someone had even claimed to have seen a phoenix, burrowing out of a huge volcano that had just existed less than a few days.

I did believe them though, since I had glimpsed Qin Wentian's battle with the Nile river dragon, a titanic sinuous entity with a long blue body akin to that of a snake. And its aura had been intimidating!

It had reached the late Nascent Soul stage! And that had alarmed me into considering the presence of a Deity Transformation spirit. That would be a great disaster!

The endless ground below finally gained a semblance of visible features, like the city nestled within hills. It was large, like miles in diameter, with tall skyscrapers that had kissed the clouds of the previous Earth.

Lines separated the buildings into blocks, which were sometimes only nursing a single large and tall scraper, or multiples of them. The lines were the roads, though up here, they looked like simple lines drawn on paper if my vision didn't zoom in.

Anything that could fly had probably been downed because of the fact that the city had to be enclosed with an energy barrier, which had created a dome around it.

With my superior eyesight, which I had to toggle in order to be able to zoom into the city, I saw the chaos brought upon because of the world changing.

The chaos wasn't widespread, maybe because someone was probably making use of their authority for the greater good. But also because of the fact that the people didn't have the energy to cause trouble.

This far away, they appeared to be walking normally, but I could pick out signs of struggle due to the increased gravity. Those at the Spirit Gathering stage were walking at a mortal's pace while those at the next stage were moving at speeds just a tad faster.

We humans, were going to have to adapt to the evolved planet. Though, even demons would have the same difficulties.

My gaze moved away from the city towards the two significant situations to the east and south of it.

In the east, a massive depression was nestled within two hills, with I already deducing the fact that it had been a lake at one point before turning into the blue scaled long bodied dragon tussling with a man within the large hole.

It was beautiful, especially the way its blue scales glinted in the sun. But it was also lethal and powerful. The good news was the fact that it was still at the early Nascent Soul stage equivalent.

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And though the city lord wasn't winning, he wasn't losing either. And that meant that I still had time to do what I came for.

The south was where I saw the person I had come to save, Lily. She was battling with a growing forest.

The trees weren't growing upwards though, instead they wanted to breach the city. And the creeping stems, which at points sunk into the soil, were gigantic enough to dwarf any human. And fast too. It was a literal tsunami of trees.

Now that I had ascertained her direction, I kicked at the air with force, shifting my direction towards her and teleported.

Within three jumps, I was right before the creeping grove, with many Core Formations behind me, and just a few 500m away from the edge of the dome shield.

(What is this?)

I transmitted to Lily behind me, with the embers of rage igniting into a flame within my heart.

One of her legs below the thigh was missing. It would be regenerated, but that didn't stop my emotional rage from rearing its head.

But then, something happened that somewhat smothered the rage. A want, a need so great that it almost caused me to tear into the wooden forest before me and start devouring, smothered me.

And I knew the origin. The symbiote manifested, trying to release tendrils towards the growing wooden forest but I held it with a sliver of my will.

"Has it always been like this?" I asked verbally even as I erected a green ward through which scattered plant matter grew to replace the ward with a wall filled with every trace element the roots of said wall could absorb, arranging the particles in a way that made it harder that even mere diamond.

'That will hold for a while.'

"We managed to incapacitate it for a moment and attacked with a precise strike that probably shattered something within it, causing this chaotic growth." A man dressed like a butler answered the question.

'Hmmm. A wood attribute spirit. My symbiote must sense something that could allow it to advance past its current limits. Could it be an enhancement in bloodline, intelligence, or both?'

I pondered even as tremors reached my body through the ground from the tree matter pounding against the other side of the barrier.

All that brought upon a dilemma. Was it going to benefit me? Or would the symbiote go rogue?

'It doeasnt matter either way. But it would be better if I eased the process."

With a wave of the hand, I ignited my soul aura and activated my deity art, causing green to sprout along the ground, even along my ward and along even the rampaging wooden amalgam, causing it to pause for a moment, even as I felt its true core because of my heightened senses towards wood energy because of the art.

The wood attribute energies were escaping from a large green core like wisps of flame, thereby causing the wood to continuously grow in order to expend that massive energy. Yet, there was semblance of will that I could sense, which was making sure that the unsanctioned growth was all heading towards the city, otherwise, the stems and brown roots would have taken the natural course, growing to the sky and earth respectively.

The symbiote was finally released fully, detaching from my body as fibers of green, which grew long tendrils to clamber over the high wall before digging into the massive stems.

In just a few seconds, the rampaging wooden spirit froze completely and I hurriedly halted my deity art.

The long and massive wall was removed by letting it loose all life, thereby creating cracks that eventually led to collapse.

"Lily, how are you?"

The others scattered, to deal with other troubles, leaving me with my secretary.

A pair of blue jeans traced the silhotte of her one leg, with the other piece of fabric stopping where steely leg met flesh. Her blouse wasn't sticking to her upper body, even laden with sweat, and her steel grey eyes were looking at me with both relief and tiredness.

Her hair of the same color as her eyes was sticking to her scalp since it was wet, but otherwise, she was okay.

"Sorry I was late. There were some-"

"There is no need for you to explain yourself, sir. You are my boss and that's it."

I scratched my hair upon her interruption. Her face was now a stoic unreadable mask.

"We are going to have more work thrown in our laps from now on. Are you up for it?"

"First, what is the current state of the world? And what is the Federal government doing to handle the situation?"

"The planet has become huge, as large as Jupiter itself..." Her widened eyes almost elicited a chuckle out of me, but I forcefully curbed it and continued. "...the Federal government has decided to shrink. Defiant is going to be the rallying point. Everyone is being evacuated as the dangers wrought by the birthed spirits are getting too immense. There is a lack of manpower to assign to every single city."

"Even my factories... Many didn't manage to get into orbit."

It was frustrating that my wealth had shrunk considerably. I now understood how the Golden merchant must have felt when he was storming out of Livia's office.

"What are you going to do now?" Lily asked after a few moments of gathering herself.

"First, I have to help the city lord. My symbiote will take a while. But, when we get some free time, I am going to need your help in planning the future of my company."

With those last words, I blasted up into the sky, with my direction towards the east.